Author: Gary

I do not have the best eating habits.  The truth is that I never have.  When I was a child, my mother was not exactly known for her cooking skills, so I found myself frequently eating take-out and frozen dinners.  On nights that she actually had the time and inclination to fix a real meal, the offering more often than not was too burnt or ridiculously undercooked for me to force down more than a few bites.  I usually ended up making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich later in the evening or rummaging through the pantry for cookies or crackers to quell the rumblings in my belly.

I can’t blame the whole situation on my mother, however.  I had quite a sweet tooth while growing up (honestly, still do) and, to sate it, I would spend a large part of my allowance at the corner convenience store on candy, gum, cookies, and sugary sodas.  Because I was a pretty active kid and because I had the metabolism of a hummingbird on speed, I stayed thin and never seemed to notice any negative impacts from my sub-par diet.

That was then, this is now.

As I have gotten older, my dedication to the four basic food groups (sugar, butter, caffeine, and anything deep fried) has begun to pay off in some less than desirable dividends.  My weight is up, my energy is down, and the dog has started following me around just to see what tasty items are going to fall off of my shirt.  (Last night it was corn chips, I believe.  Might have been a muffin.)

I need to reverse this trend.  I need to start eating better.  Although I admit “better” is a pretty broad target.  Not putting half a stick of butter on my bread is “better.”  Eating two pieces of cheesecake for dessert instead of three is “better.”  Not stopping at McDonalds for a snack to build up enough energy to drive all the way across town to Jack in the Box is “better.”

And it is not just the kind of food I have been eating.  I need to cut back on the amount of food I eat as well.  My friends and family keep telling me that I should work on my portion control.  This is a new concept to me.  Previously, I thought portion control just meant that I had full access to the kitchen and could take as much as I wanted.

Unfortunately, I again have to put part of the blame for this problem on my parents.  My father always told me I had to eat everything on my plate.  He said it was wrong to waste food, and then he would mutter something about starving children in Africa.  Like, I had any idea where the hell Africa was.  I still probably couldn’t find the place on a map, but let’s keep to the original point.  My utter failure at geography is irrelevant to this rant and will have to be more deeply explored on some other day.

Because of my dad’s exhortations on behalf of starving kids neither of us had ever met, I have spent most of my life eating whatever was placed in front of me.  At a restaurant, I typically devour everything served on the plate except that inedible green thing set on the side for garnish.  What’s it called?  Oh, yeah … vegetables.

The other day, I went to a Chinese restaurant with my buddy, Bob, and ordered the beef and broccoli lunch for two.  It was delicious.  Bob ordered sesame chicken for himself.  Even with the added difficulty level of using chopsticks instead of a fork, I managed to finish the entire platter of beef and broccoli, chicken chow mein, and pork fried rice.  I knew it was too much food.  Everyone in the restaurant knew it was too much food, but still I powered on.  Half way through the meal, the waiter stopped by just to tell me I shouldn’t eat so much.  I told him I was fully aware I was overdoing it, and then ordered another egg roll.

When the check came, it came with a fortune cookie.  I broke it open and the note inside said, “For the love of God, please put the cookie down.”

What I’m getting at, I guess, is that I have a problem.  I know I have a problem and I am working on it, but I also know it is going to take time to correct a lifetime of poor eating habits.  I spent fifty years getting to this point, it may take a few more to turn it around.

For now, I need to wrap this up and go fix dinner for the family.  Tonight’s menu is baked salmon with stir fried broccoli and asparagus.  That, of course, is not what I will be eating.  I will go straight to dessert which will be two pieces of cheesecake.

Two, not three.

See?  Better.

I have heard it said that there are two kinds of people in the world: dog people and cat people.  I suppose, in a way this is true, but I would posit that there is actually a third category which does not normally get much attention.  There are dog people, cat people, and “why the hell are all these animals in my house” people.

It boggles my mind how the practice of allowing live, wild animals to wander unfettered inside a person’s home ever came into being.  And it makes me wonder who the first person was to have some kind of furred creature crawl into his house and then decide that not only was he not going to chase it away, but he would go ahead and start feeding it.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t hate animals.  I simply don’t understand the attraction of living with them.

I actually own a dog and a couple of cats, but having them in the house with me was not originally my idea.  They just seemed to appear without me having any say in the matter.  One day I’m a happy person with the full run of the house, the next day I’m a pet owner.

I have learned to tolerate them, and they in return allow me to remain in their presence (although I appear to be on shaky ground with one of the cats).  However, they are a lot of work to take care of and they seem to offer very little in return for all of the effort expended on them.  They require constant attention.  You have to clean up after them, feed them, exercise them, and, on rare occasions, scrape them off the road because they were too stupid to move out of the way of a moving car.  (Just to clarify, it was not my car.)

They are like children; all self-centered neediness and no gratitude.  In addition, animals will never grow up and move out of the house.  So … yeah, like I said: they are like children.

When you bring a dog indoors, it will wander the house aimlessly, scratching itself and drooling wherever it goes.  Occasionally it will drink out of the toilet and rummage through the garbage, eating anything it finds.  I fail to see the difference between adopting a dog and inviting a homeless person to stay with you.

And cats aren’t any better.  They will pee on the walls and carpet to mark their territory.  They dig through the litter box, pushing their feces around for the fun of it, then decide this would be a good time to take a stroll on the kitchen counter.  And when they are feeling ignored, they will rip up the furniture and throw up on the carpets.  Again, these are all services that any roadside transient would be happy to provide for a roof over his head and a steady supply of kibble.

And despite all we do for our animals, we must never forget that they are not our friends.  The only reason they stay around is because we give them stuff.  Hell, if I strolled into a neighbor’s house and they told me that they would feed me and take care of me for the rest of my life and all I had to do was poop in a box, I would never leave either.

I have heard people argue that dogs give unconditional love.  I must disagree on this assumption.  As a test, I suggest you put your dog in the back yard and stop feeding it.  Next, leave the gate open and I bet you will find out just how much your pet loves you.  My guess is Fido will be off looking for a new family before you can finish the sentence, “Where’d he go?”

But, I suppose the thing that bothers me the most about having pets in the house is the simple certainty that when I die, if my body is not found immediately, the animals are going to eat me.

I admit that dogs will at least wait until the body is cold before they dig in.  They will hang out for a while just to see if you get back up and put more doggy chow in their bowl.  But, if too much time goes by, there will come a point that “the guy who feeds me” becomes “the guy I ate.”

Cats don’t offer the same grace period.  As soon as a person stops moving, they are already circling, licking their chops.  I am convinced that if they thought they could get away with it they would just decide one day to pounce on their owners like a leopard on a wildebeest.

I have woken up in the morning on more than one occasion and found my cat sitting on the edge of the bed staring at me.  When I sit up, I swear that there is a look of disappointment in her eyes.  Then, she just jumps off the bed and saunters over to her food bowl as if to say, “Okay, I can wait one more day.”

I don’t like the fact that she is as aware of the inevitable outcome as I am.  She doesn’t even care enough about my feelings to pretend to feel bad about it.  Although, I sort of have to admire her confidence.

Does that make me a cat person?

This week, my wife and I celebrated our 26^th wedding anniversary.  Actually, “celebrated” might be too strong a word.  “Acknowledged” would be a little closer to the truth.  It is hard to build up a lot of enthusiasm for an event that simply reminds you that another year has passed and the only accomplishment you have to show for it is your spouse hasn’t decided to leave you yet.

When my wife and I were first married, each new anniversary was an accomplishment that we commemorated with cards, gifts, romantic trips, and breakfast in bed.  As the years passed, breakfast in bed became cold cereal and toast in the kitchen.  Vacation trips stopped happening when we had kids and we suddenly found ourselves completely without the time or money to go anywhere.  And as far as gifts go, after a few years we discovered that the best gift we could give to each other was permission to not drive ourselves crazy trying to find the perfect present to buy for one another.

We still exchange cards, which I suppose is something.  But in general, observation of the date we married has become a little less remarkable every year. This year, when the alarm clock went off, we fist-bumped then my wife went off to work and I got up to mow the lawn.

Who says romance is dead?

And speaking of romance, I recall one anniversary when I booked a room for the weekend at a local hotel.  The room was stocked with champagne, flowers, and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  Although this year will also involve hotel rooms, the only flowers will be on the 1970’s themed, floral curtains.  I have booked a room for three days in Anaheim while my wife has hotel reservations in Reno, Nevada.  I’m not sure exactly what that says about a relationship when a couple decides to spend their anniversary residing in completely different states, but feel free to make of it what you will.

We also used to go out to dinner on our anniversary.  It was a nice way to get out of the house, just the two of us, and enjoy a quiet night together.  We still go out, but only because both of us are generally too tired to cook, and we have had to give up the candle-lit tables for two in exchange for a booth that seats four, Styrofoam dishes, and sticky Formica countertops.  Not quite so glamorous.

Sex is much different now, as well.  Maybe I shouldn’t address this particular subject in my blog, but I feel like over the past few months we have become friends, and I trust that you will keep this just between us.

Early in our marriage, my wife and I would open a bottle of wine, strip down to something more comfortable and end up making love in whatever room of the house we happened to find ourselves.  This was, of course, before we had children.  These days we rarely even sit on the same side of the couch.  We have learned our lesson, and are generally terrified we might inadvertently do something that would lead to having more children.  So, instead, we smile and wave at each other from a safe distance across the room, while occasionally shouting out answers to episodes of Jeopardy!

My wife and I have been married for 26 years.  In a world where one out of every two marriages fails, 26 years is a very long time.  And when I think about it, I am frequently left wondering, what did we do wrong?  I know when we married, we were young, stupid, and in love; the perfect beginning for that first failed relationship.  So, why are we still together?  I’m not certain, but I think that it is probably my fault.

The original plan was to get rich, grow to despise each other’s presence, divorce, and go pick out some new trophy spouses.  Unfortunately, I screwed up the first part of that.  We never had enough money to make the divorce worth the trouble.  What’s the point of breaking up if the only assets available to split are an eight-year old car and two cats?

We never really got to step two either.  I have to admit I still like having her around.  (Does she feel the same way?  Well … there are days I would be afraid to ask that question out loud.)

Anyway, I think we are stuck with one another at this point.  I have been married too long to even imagine what being single might look like.  Besides, I am quite certain nobody else would be interested in me if I suddenly found myself on the market again.  Like a banana that has already turned brown, I am past my expiration date and ready for the dumpster.

Maybe I could be banana bread.  Or pudding?

But, I digress.

If marriage is a series of hurdles, I feel like we have already gone over most of them.  We knocked a few down and tripped a couple of times, but we are still running for the finish line.  There is nothing left for my wife and me but to move on to that last big jump; the next phase of all successful marriages:

Try to outlive one another and see who collects the life insurance.

The other day, I was standing over the sink washing dishes.  The dishes had been left over from the night before because after I cooked dinner I needed to fold some laundry, and I decided to just leave them in the sink to soak overnight.  While scrubbing the plates, I was making a mental checklist of items I needed to add to the grocery shopping list, so I would have everything I needed to make meals during the following week.

I heard the washing machine ping as it announced that it was finished with the load of towels I had put in earlier that morning.  Setting aside the last of the dishes, I dried my hands and prepared to strip the beds and start washing the sheets.  Before I could get to the sheets, however, the cat barfed, and I needed to stop and clean up the massive hairball that now occupied the hallway floor.

As I crawled along the floor on my hands and knees, mopping up animal bile with a wad of paper towels, I found myself wondering:

What the f*** happened to my life?

I used to wear a badge and uniform every day.  I used to carry a gun.  Now, I wear sweats and a t-shirt and carry around an extra pair of socks for when I accidentally step on something wet.

I used to solve people’s problems, protecting lives and property.  Now, I try to figure out why the sink won’t drain, or the toilet won’t flush, and I wonder if that funny smell I noticed is coming from the garbage can or if something is rotting in the pantry.

I used to be the “Man of the House.”  Now, I’m the houseman.

I’m not complaining because I think the chores are demeaning or because I think the work is beneath me.  I mean … I do, but that is not the point.  I’m complaining because when I retired I thought I would be allowed to lie down on the couch, turn on the television set, and quietly die.  Somebody might turn me over occasionally and put a mirror to my nose.  And maybe there would be Jello.  I don’t know exactly what I expected, I didn’t really think it through, but I figured that basically I would just melt into the couch cushions and be absorbed by the cloth covered spongy material, never to be seen again.

But that isn’t what happened.  Instead, I was told that I needed to find something to occupy my time and give me a reason to get up in the morning and get out of bed.  This was a complete betrayal of everything I was promised while I was still working.

My wife told me that maybe taking care of the house and the yard would keep me active.  It would help me stay healthy and allow me to live longer.

First of all, living longer is not really an incentive to do yardwork.  (What am I living longer for?  To do more yardwork?)  Second, I’ve discovered in the last eighteen months that I’m really bad at it.  I haven’t blown anything up yet, but every time I try to fix something, I discover a new level to my personal incompetence.

Last week, I noticed that several plants were not getting watered.  We have drip lines and sprinklers all over the yard to keep everything green, but they have to be checked and maintained regularly or they stop working.  I discovered that one of the valve timers had died.  I replaced the battery in the timer, but it still would not turn on.  I removed the old valve timer completely, planning to order a new one on line to replace it, but when I removed it, the sprinklers turned on and I could not get them to turn back off.

I hurriedly reattached the timer, but the water kept flowing.  I had no idea how to turn them off.  In a panic, I called a sprinkler repair company and begged them to hurry out to the house and figure out the problem before I needed to pop open a life raft.  They agreed to help.

A very nice gentleman came out to the house, looked at the sprinkler system for all of five seconds, then reached down and turned something with his hand.  The water immediately shut off.  He glanced at me with a look that very clearly stated, “You’re a moron, but it’s idiots like you that keep me in business so I’m not going to say anything out loud.”

He handed me a bill and I mumbled a thank you while staring at the ground, completely unable to maintain further eye contact.  He slipped me a business card from out of his shirt pocket and told me to call anytime I needed assistance.  He didn’t actually say, “I’ve got the right testicle, feel free to call me when you’re ready for me to come back and get the left one,” but I knew what he meant.

It’s moments like this that make me think my first retirement plan was the one I should have stuck with.  Lack of movement and a slow decay start to look very attractive.  Unfortunately, I believe it’s too late to follow through with Plan A.

As inviting as a coma on the couch might be, that hairball in the hallway isn’t going to clean up itself.

I don’t travel well.  I love to be in different countries and places, experiencing adventures and exotic foods that I could not have tried from home, but I don’t actually like the process of going anywhere.  For some reason my stomach seems to rebel whenever I board any form of transportation that moves independently of my feet.

I get motion sick remarkably easily.  I have barfed on boats, coughed up in cars, tossed my lunch on a train, and even managed to hurl in a helicopter.  In fact, the only mode of transportation that I don’t recall vomited in, on, or out of is an airplane.  I am not altogether certain how I have avoided that scenario given my other travel experiences.  The only explanation I can come up with is that along with my susceptibility to motion sickness, I am also quite claustrophobic.  And perhaps the terror of travelling in a tiny metal tube at thirty thousand feet trumps a queasy tummy.

Whatever the reason, I don’t really mind flying.  Other than the absolute certainty that five minutes after I board the aircraft I am going to suffocate and likely be crushed by the walls of the plane as they close in on me of course.  Other than that, it’s all good.

Cars, however, are my true nemesis.

I recall as a child, I got car sick anytime my family drove more than fifteen minutes in any direction.  Sitting in the backseat, I would watch the scenery flash by the side of the car for a few minutes, then I would ask my parents if we were going to stop soon.  My mom always asked the same question: “Do you need to pee, or throw up?”

She knew I was going to throw up, it was no great secret, but I guess she was trying to afford me some small amount of dignity by blaming my request on my bladder.  Usually, however, I would be honest and say my stomach hurt and I needed to get out of the car.  They didn’t stop.  They never stopped.  Instead, my mom would rummage through her purse, pull out a plastic garbage bag, and hand it back to me.  She would tell me that we were only gong to be on the road for a few more minutes and I should try to close my eyes and sleep.  She knew as well as I did that before we got anywhere close to our destination I was going to be filling that bag with the contents of my stomach.

I have a vivid recollection of one particular camping trip when I was about twelve years old.  We packed up the car to drive home on a Sunday after spending the weekend by a small lake in Sonora, California.  My dad decided that we should eat before we drove home, so he made grilled cheese sandwiches for us.  I’m sure you can already see where this is going.  Because I was twelve, and had the attention span of a gnat, I didn’t think about the drive home and I happily inhaled the sandwich he had prepared for me.

We climbed into the car, and we had not driven more than five miles from our camping site when I realized my mistake.  In an effort to hold off the inevitable climax, I lay down across the back seat of the car, closed my eyes and tried to make myself go to sleep.  (This was in the 1970’s when cars were bigger than houses, and parents did not seem to care about such pointless concerns as whether or not their child was wearing a seatbelt.  So, no, I did not have my seatbelt on, and yes, there was enough room for me to lay stretched out across the back seat.)

I think I did actually manage to fall asleep, because I don’t recall most of the two-hour drive home.  I believe I slipped into some sort of nauseated coma that kept me right on the edge of, but not quite, throwing up.  I was sweating and having lucid fever dreams of being turned inside out and my head exploding to make room for the cats fighting in my chest as they struggled to climb up and out of my body.

My next clear memory was of my dad exiting the freeway and slamming on the brakes at a red light.  I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was a red light, but it is altogether possible he just stomped on the brakes to see if he could get me to fall into the floorboards.

Which I did.

I climbed back up into the seat and hurriedly grabbed the little handle on the inside of the car door that would enable me to roll down the window.  But it was futile.  My stomach had already been pushed past the point of no return.

For reasons known only to my deepest subconscious mind, I continued to aim for the still-closed window and proceeded to paint the insides of my parents’ vehicle with the contents of my own insides.  I can attest first hand that a grilled cheese sandwich does not look nearly as appetizing the second time you see it.

I finally managed to roll down the window, trying to clean up the mess, but only succeeded in squeegeeing the debris off the glass and causing it to slough down the inside panel of the car door.  Realizing I was not actually helping the situation, I rolled the window back up.  It was streaked and completely opaque with bodily fluids.  I started to roll it down a second time – I think I was in shock and my brain was skipping a little bit – when my dad completely lost his cool.

“Leave the goddamned window alone!  You’re making it worse!”

He wasn’t wrong.

Ah, good times.

But, why have my thoughts taken such a deep dark turn today?  Why is my mind consumed by thoughts of regurgitation?  Simple.  In a couple of weeks, I will be boarding a bus with my daughter, EM2 (and about a hundred of her school bandmates) to chaperone a trip to Southern California.  The drive will take several hours, and there is only one planned stop.

What will be the outcome (or outflow?) of this trip, I really can’t say.  I am hoping the bus arrives at its destination with no mishaps.  But, time will tell.

The only thing I know with any certainty is that I will not be boarding the bus with any grilled cheese sandwiches.

Today’s blog marks the sixth month anniversary of Deep Dark Thoughts.  I have been commenting on my thoughts and misadventures every week for half of a year, now.  And what have I accomplished in that time?  Well, honestly not much.

The world hasn’t changed, and nobody’s life has been significantly altered because I have chosen to sit down and post weekly rants of a thousand words or less.  However, I do hope that I have at least added a little humor to your weekly routine.

Is this blog a waste of time?  I don’t believe so.  Not mine anyway.  It is certainly a waste of yours, but then, that was the plan all along: to make a few minutes of your day pass a little more quickly than it might have otherwise.

Are people reading my weekly rants?  In a word, no.  Or if they are, they aren’t admitting to it, which I completely understand.  I had reservations myself about admitting I had anything to do with this blog.  And I’m the one writing it.

Or am I?  (Insert dramatic music here: dun dun, Dun!)

But despite the lack of acclaim, money, power, or even general notice from the public, I do believe I have been gaining some small forward momentum.  For example, the other day I asked my oldest daughter if I could use her real name on my blog.  She said, “Absolutely not.”

I consider this to be progress.  The last time I asked her about the blog, she had no idea what I was talking about.  This time, by telling me no, she has admitted to three things:

1. She knows I am writing a blog.
2. She is concerned that someone she knows might actually see it and recognize her name.
3. She does not want to have anything in writing that might suggest in any way that she and I are related.

Number 3 might have hurt my feelings a little bit except that she had already made that point very clear when she was in high school.  Whenever I dropped her off somewhere in front of her friends, she would refer to me as “Jeeves” and then tell me to pull the car around back and wait for her to call.  (Although why she thought her friends would actually believe she had a chauffer driving her around in a ten-year-old Saturn, I have no idea.)

However, by refusing to allow me to use her real name, my oldest daughter has also created a bit of a problem for me.  If I write about my kids in Deep Dark Thoughts, I don’t want to continually refer to them as “the older one” and “the younger one.”  That gets boring really fast.  I thought about using fake names, but that might get confusing if I forget what names I was using or accidentally mix them up.

So, in the name of simplicity, I have decided that any time I refer to the girls I will call the older child Epic Mistake #1 (or EM1) and the younger one Epic Mistake #2 (EM2).

Before anyone decides to send me hate mail for calling my children mistakes, let me just be clear that I am not saying we had the kids by mistake.  My wife and I very much wanted to have children.  It’s just that we soon discovered we didn’t want these children.

The mistake wasn’t the fact that we had kids in the first place, the mistake was once we figured out how rotten the girls were, we decided to keep them anyway.  From the age of two, our daughters have made it their mission in life to thoroughly deplete my wife and I of all financial, physical, and emotional resources we might once have had.  These two vampires systematically sucked us dry of our very will to live, and yet we continued to allow them to stay in our home.

It is too late now to try to change anything or even to kick them out of the house, and even if it wasn’t, truthfully, I am too worn out to make the effort.  EM1 and EM2 are adults in the eyes of the law and we no longer have any control over them, assuming we ever did.  They are both able to choose their own paths and are free to plague the world as they see fit.

Sorry about that, world.  They are your problem now, not mine.

Of course, like any parent, I will worry about them when they are off and living on their own.  I will wonder if they are eating properly and taking care of themselves.  I will hope they have good jobs and are making good decisions.  And I will check the daily newsfeeds to make sure they haven’t been arrested for doing something incredibly stupid.

On the bright side, if they do get arrested, I will be glad I didn’t use their real names in my blog.